Book description
Inspired by a voracious curiosity about humans and other subjects, the
poems in Heather Christle's What Is Amazing describe and invent worlds
in an attempt to understand through participation. The book draws upon
the wisdom of foolishness and the logic of glee, while simultaneously
exploring the suffering inherent to embodied consciousness. Speakers
play out moments of bravado and fear, love and mortality, disappointment
and desire. They socialize incorrigibly with lakes, lovers, fire, and
readers, reasoning their way to unreasonable conclusions. These poems
try to understand how it is that we come to recognize and differentiate
objects and beings, how wholly each is attached to its name, and which
space reveals them. What Is Amazing delights in fully inhabiting its
varied forms and voices, singing worlds that often coincide with our
own. "(T)he poems in What is Amazing radiate with boundless joy
and celebration, rich in an enthusiasm that so much other poetry lacks.
...These poems are wonderfully fresh, and the sytax startles in such
strange ways, electrifying subtle musing against the absolutely
fantastic and banal. Her poems know full well how to live in the moment,
and capture the same." --Rob McLennan HEATHER CHRISTLE has taught
at Emory University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She
lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, and is the author of The Difficult
Farm and The Trees The Trees.
